In the release, Santorum communications director Hogan Gidley said, "Rick Santorum has a consistent core – and he showed that when he went to Puerto Rico and took a locally unpopular but principled stance about English being the official language of America. Mitt Romney on the other hand, switched another one of his positions to gain favor in Puerto Rico, by saying that Puerto Ricans shouldn't have to learn English if they want to become a state. We all know Mitt Romney will do and say anything to get votes, and this is just another example of that."

Santorum did take a controversial stand on English as a condition for Puerto Rico's possible statehood last week in a newspaper interview on the island. He later said to an extent that he was misquoted or taken out of context.

He told CNN National Political Correspondent Jim Acosta that both English and Spanish should be required if Puerto Rico were to become the 51st state.

"Obviously Spanish will be spoken here on the island. But this needs to be a bilingual country, not just a Spanish speaking country," Santorum told Acosta.

"Sen. Santorum is lashing out at Mitt Romney because voters know we won't get the economy going again by replacing one president with no job creation experience with another with no job creation experience," Romney press secretary Andrea Saul told CNN. "Sen. Santorum doesn't understand how the economy works and also doesn't understand that English has been an official language of Puerto Rico for over 100 years."

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who's making his second bid for the GOP nomination, won more than 80% of the vote in Sunday's primary, capturing all 20 delegates at stake. Romney has a more than a two-to-one advantage over Santorum in the race for delegates, but he's still less than halfway toward the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

soundoff(336 Responses)

Charlie from the North

In order to have " a record of job creation" I think you should have to show that your actions resulted in more jobs created than lost. By that standard Romney is more of a job destroyer than creator. As far as "official languages" go, it is unAmerican and unconstitutional to force a group of people to speak any language. Are we kicking out the Pennsylvania
Dutch for speaking German, the French in Northern Maine (who have been here since before we were a state)? There is one word for Rick Sanatorium; wrong! About this and so many issues he is out of touch and nearly out of time. It has been a long 15 minutes.

March 19, 2012 12:40 pm at 12:40 pm |

cf

If Santorum is such a great Christian as he claims to be, maybe he should read the book that he so highly regards: What's that it says about not lying and bearing false witness? I'll I ever hear from his mouth are lies and character assassinations.

March 19, 2012 12:41 pm at 12:41 pm |

ShawnDH

This Santorum guy is incredibly creepy and Mittens is a pathological liar. Good luck with that, guys. I'm voting for Obama - the rational, moderate, informed, honest adult in the race and the only reasonable choice for 2012.

March 19, 2012 12:43 pm at 12:43 pm |

Fabjan

While Santorum is in Chicago, he needs to tell all of the Ebonics speakers up there that they will have to speak English in order to get welfare under his administration.

March 19, 2012 12:49 pm at 12:49 pm |

coy4one

What kind of an answer is skirting the issues with "job creation?" The issue here is languange...no one in this article said anything about job creation. This is why none of the GOP candidates will make it to the WH. They are so centered-in on their "buzz" topics, they mislead the public! In this election, the GOP is showing how much of a joke they've really become.

March 19, 2012 12:49 pm at 12:49 pm |

JohnRJohnson

All of these candidates are a joke. And none of them will ever get elected to any office ever again.

March 19, 2012 12:49 pm at 12:49 pm |

William dodge

Cf you got that

March 19, 2012 12:49 pm at 12:49 pm |

ATL Guy

I wouldn't vote for a Republican if my life depended on it. Santorum is one of the most undisciplined person ever and the more he acts out the more ridiculous he looks.

March 19, 2012 12:50 pm at 12:50 pm |

coy4one

CORRECTION to sentence number 3. This is why none of the GOP candidates will NOT make it to the WH

March 19, 2012 12:50 pm at 12:50 pm |

obandon

I really dislike this guy. His temper is deplorable. He gets angry and spouts off stupid comments and then denies the context of that statement. He is definately not Presidential material and needs to grow up. He has no chance of winning against Obama, especially with his stance against women. He needs to go back to the cave man days he came from. He would ruin this country further and faster than any other candidate.

March 19, 2012 12:51 pm at 12:51 pm |

carmine

ALL santorum does is whine and talk, talk, talk!

March 19, 2012 12:53 pm at 12:53 pm |

ReaganDem

Wow! The Republican candidates are slowly morphing into something unrecognizable.

March 19, 2012 12:55 pm at 12:55 pm |

jamison

One flip-flops and the other constantly misquotes. Do we really want either of these idiots to lead our country???
Obama is not always right, but at least he is intelligent and logical.

March 19, 2012 12:55 pm at 12:55 pm |

Loren, Keene NH

@coy4one...if you read the article after the section on job creation it went on to say "Sen. Santorum doesn't understand how the economy works and also doesn't understand that English has been an official language of Puerto Rico for over 100 years." Notice the quotes...this came from the Romney camp...it is speaking about language. Anybody know that the island of Puerto Rico is bi-lingual. English is one of the official languages, Spanish the other. Santorum misspoke and now wants to weep about it and call it standing on his principles...baloney.

Loren, Keene

March 19, 2012 12:57 pm at 12:57 pm |

Rudy NYC

DB wrote on page 4:

...I'm not sure why Puerto Rico would have to declare English as an official language to become a state when other states have not had to do so for admission.
--------------
Everything about Rick Santorum can be explained in The Bible. Are you familiar with the stories about city of Babel?

March 19, 2012 12:57 pm at 12:57 pm |

AC

Santorum is either a liar or an idiot. Some of the garbage that comes out of his mouth is down right stupid and untrue!

March 19, 2012 12:59 pm at 12:59 pm |

ya no

According to the two Republican front-runners, neither of the two Republican front-runners is either honorable, honest or consistent. What goes on here?

March 19, 2012 01:00 pm at 1:00 pm |

Dan

Be very very afraid of both of these guys.

March 19, 2012 01:01 pm at 1:01 pm |

Reggie from LA

@Robert and everybody else on that "Ebonics" train. You sound just like the crowd that is behind Santorum. You think little and say much...but that's a clever little joke you got there. You, like Santorum think that African Americans own the welfare system. Your kind of rhetoric is so bad that I have seen people lose their homes because idiots have them so proud that they dismiss assistance, lose their homes, then seek social services anyway. By the way RICK, PR do speak English as a 1st and 2nd language in many cases. Mr Santorum should make a better effort to use those advance degrees.

March 19, 2012 01:03 pm at 1:03 pm |

maggie

Sorry Andrea Saul but romney has no job creation experience either. His Bain Capital experience was not about creating jobs but saving companies from themselves at a great profit to them. If Bain managed to create or preserve jobs it was incidental. Massachusetts was 47th in job creation when Romney left the governor's office. Not exactly a stellar record when you compare it to the vast improvement since his Democrat successor, Deval Patrick or for that matter, even to Obama's record. However weak Republicans may view it, it is much better than the hundreds of thousands of jobs we were losing when they left office. I'm all for a better plan, wherever it may come from; I'm just not hearing it - not from Romney nor from Santorum.

March 19, 2012 01:04 pm at 1:04 pm |

DavidInVancouverWA

All three GOP candidates are idiots. One is not more of an idiot than the other ... they each have their own style of idiocy.

March 19, 2012 01:06 pm at 1:06 pm |

BC

With all due respect to JFK, senators do not make good presidents. They do not have executuve experience. The best presidents have always been governors because they know how to lead.

March 19, 2012 01:16 pm at 1:16 pm |

Brational

santorum, palin, and the rest of their group spout off constantly about "respect for human life" while they and their supporters are entirely dis-respectful of humans (and in romney's case, the family dog). They can't even be respectful in defeat or in winning. They are the same as the radical muslims that mention god in every sentence and then take lives like they have that right.

March 19, 2012 01:16 pm at 1:16 pm |

Rudy NYC

maggie wrote on page 8:

Sorry Andrea Saul but romney has no job creation experience either. His Bain Capital experience was not about creating jobs but saving companies from themselves at a great profit to them. If Bain managed to create or preserve jobs it was incidental.
-------–
Exactly. Hit it out of the park, maggie. The more paychecks a company has to pay, the lower the net profit. Creating jobs was not a priority at Bain Capital.

Besides, we have no proof that Mitt Romney's claims job creation are true. During a debate last year he claimed to have created "100,000 jobs while at Bain Capital." He has yet to tell us where and how these jobs were created. Romney has backed off of that exorbitant claim. Most of the jobs he was claiming were created *after* he left Bain, or *after* Bain was no longer affiliated with the companies. Especially, Staples.

March 19, 2012 01:16 pm at 1:16 pm |

JDinHouston

Great, so we have one candidate who seems to be ready to say the wrong thing every step of the way, and another that is willing to say anything every step of the way. Is this what we deserve?